Discussing a trademark in general is often difficult. Why? It has to do with the fact that you can trademark many things that are unique and entirely different.

When a person thinks of a trademark, most picture a logo of some sort. The swooping Coca Cola brand name is the classic example. Another example is the big red “O” you see in the television commercials for Overstock.com. Such examples of trademarks are fairly standard and most people can understand them without much effort.

In a rather stunning move, Google recently purchased the popular video site YouTube The question many are asking is how Google will deal with the potential copyright violations on the site?

To show you how much the Internet has changed in a relatively short amount of time, it is important to look back at the last big public medium that had copyright issues. In this case, we are talking about Napster. As you know, Napster was a system where music could be traded by people for free. This, of course, drove the record labels and artists crazy. If people were trading the music for free, royalties and revenues were not being produced. To quell the uprising, the music industry went after Napster and even individual users, claiming that the copyright for the musical pieces was being violated. As you also know, the record companies won the fight.

Once you start conducting business, you are going to start running into the topic of intellectual property and trademarks. Understanding the role of a trademark will help you grasp why they are important.

A trademark is a unique form of intellectual property. Most intellectual property is created to protect the person or business creating it. A patent, for example, is designed to protect the inventor from having other parties use it without consent. Copyright works much the same way. A person who writes a hit song should receive compensation from it and copyright is designed to protect the person in this regard.

The much-bandied about phrase “separation of church and state” means different things to different people. To those from the secular humanist persuasion, it means that the state can make no public acknowledgement of religion, have no religious displays, recognize no tax exemptions for churches, and goes so far to regulate even religious expressions of private individuals in the public arena out of line. One also hears that any attempt by others to “moralize” or use any religious values to argue for a policy should be silenced. On the other hand, there are those who believe the matter is simply that the government should not establish an official state church, or that a church should not be anointing officials in the government. Other than that, people should believe and practice how they see fit. Both sides couch their arguments on constitutional theories, some involving Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation letter.

A domain name is your address on the web, which can make it vitally important. So, what do you do when someone tries to move onto your yard?

If you work on the web at all, you know that domain names can be very similar. This raises the question of when one domain crosses the line and infringes on another. The issue is often brought up with larger commercial sites when others register similar domains.

Creativity is one of the human traits that can apply to any area of one’s life. Creative people have two tendencies. Firstly, they are capable of envisioning something new and different, such as a new way of doing something, or a new idea, or a new way of expressing their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Secondly, they want to share their new insights with the world. Most people who have the creative gene also have the tendency to want credit for their creativity. This is where the wonderful world of copyrights comes into play.

I recall very vividly, a scene from a 1970’s comedy where the hapless hero of the piece, accidentally gets engaged to a young lady and spends the whole program plotting hilarious ways to escape from this engagement. At the conclusion of the vignette the chap breaks off the engagement, receives a sound slap from the distraught lady and is promptly told that she will sue him for breach of promise.

Well, many of us have heard of the term “Google Slap.” That is when Google is the slapper. But now Google is the one that has been slapped.

Google, the Californian company that runs the world’s most popular search engine, lost a court case in Brussels Belgium on 13 February 2007 where it was found that Google had breached copyright.

Copiepresse, a copyright protection specialist, was representing a group of 18 mostly French language newspapers who complained that Google was using “cached” links to offer free access to archived articles from the papers that were sold on a subscription basis.

Since as photographers, we have always licensed (rented) our photos, it is shocking to us to find a photobuyer assuming that their payment for a photo represents both present and future use of the photo.

Unless a “work-for-hire” agreement is arranged in writing between the photobuyer and the stock photographer, payment for the use of a photo is for one-time rights only.

UK couples should be aware that their divorce payouts could be at risk if their former partner is declared bankrupt. A Shropshire divorce solicitor has warned couple’s facing a divorce that their financial settlement could be at risk if their former partner is declared bankrupt.

“In today’s climate of ever-increasing debt, it’s imperative that couples are fully aware of the risks involved when they reach a settlement in their divorce – it may not always be the closure they were hoping for.”